ask shit ingame, run a trial raid, see how the player is doing... ofc it could be facilitated by blizzard too... via an ingame application tool that is actually decent.

We still do those in addition to application. and sometime personal chat on our TS.

Written app has more benefits for a guild, you get valuable info how the person applying is able to complete given task (write proper app). Some other personal traits are given out like social background on given server, personal strong sites (and from that derived weak sites). If the person skips through all fields of template in quick one-word replyes he is not the one we look for.

Originally Posted by Mad_Murdock

Does you app mention hourly wages and health and vacation benefits ? Sounds like it's serious business, maybe should mention some of the perks to the job they are applying for.

I'm just kidding, couldn't resist

We used to have those: Guild meeting every half of year(strong alcohol/THC tolerance required), IRL consulting/help benefit (we have a bunch of experts in our guild), Guild T-Shirts

I find the whole thing of guild applications basically being job applications a bit silly, but I don't mind yours, short and simply that doesn't feel like you're pretty much applying to a job. I do understand that there are reasons for the intricate applications, especially if you are a very top end guild, though. But even then you have people who over exaggerate themselves, I've done it before.

You don't need all that information to know if a player is good or not, I know it helps but it doesn't tell the whole story. just take them for a spin either in a normal raid, or hell even an LFR now a days, to see if they stand in shit and know what to do/play their class and you would be fine.

Long apps don't bother me just because they're long. But when I spend an extended period of time filling out an app, and when I interview they ask me two questions and nothing I spent all that time on in the app even comes up... It makes me immediately think two things:

1) They're wasting my time by making me fill out information they're not actually interested in
2) They're careless and lazy in their approach to new guildies

My tips to those making apps:

1) Don't rip off someone elses, it makes your guild look lazy
2) Don't ask questions you don't really care about, nobody likes jumping through unnecessary hoops
3) Be clear and concise in all your requests for information, because (to someone like me) your application is a reflection of your raid style. If it's muddled down in unnecessary questions and information, then I'm only going to assume your raids waste time with the same types of questions and information
4) Ask practical questions in the "interview" process, whether it be on the forums or in vent. Find out how these people react in real situations, not just how well they can rip off a website
5) Be strict and knowledgable, but don't be an asshole. If someone in your guild is helping interview and asking class specific questions, make sure that person knows that class specifically. There's not much that's going to make your guild look more silly than your new app knowing more than your "pro player"

Just a few tips that will hopefully help.

The biggest thing to remember is that not only are YOU using an app to filter out players you don't want, but your potential Applicants (the good ones at least) will be looking at your site and your app to filter out guilds they don't want. You have to sell yourself to the applicant just as much as the applicant needs to sell themselves to you.

Unless you only want to join a social/leveling/casual raiding guild, there's no reason to object to an application process. I do agree with keeping them brief, though.

In my guild, asking someone to correctly fill out a short application tells us a few basic - but important - things right away:

Are they capable of following instructions, or (a) did they not bother to read; (b) are they incapable of following simple instructions; (c) are they a special snowflake who believes that instructions are silly and don't apply to them. Any of those possibilities point to someone who may not be a good fit in a progression guild.

Guild history can be important, depending on your guild's priorities. For us, a history of bouncing from guild to guild may indicate someone who doesn't have the patience to be part of a team that has to hang in there for progression wipe nights and instead just wants to cruise along for gear once an encounter is in farm mode.

It may also indicate someone who's pretty much a jerk and who just can't manage to conduct themselves like an adult who's a team player. That may be less important to some guilds than to others, but in my guild we have a "no jerks" environment.

An application gives us a place to request an Armory link and do a thoughtful gear/spec/gems/enchant check. We're not going to take someone along on a normal raid run if they aren't prepared, and we're not going to invite them to one of our trial Flex runs if they obviously aren't even ready for that. Doing so is a waste of everyone's time.

So yeah, if your priority is to be in a guild for the perks and do casual raiding, then by all means go for it when someone is offering to invite people right out of Trade chat. But if you have an interest in being part of a guild that creates a specific sort of environment or that has a stronger focus on progression, then responding to a reasonable, brief application shouldn't be an issue.

Yessir. Seems a decent place to start when determining if they player's expectations and guild's expectations are compatible.

Comments like this one are often followed up with "Just get them in vent". A vent interview is really the same thing. Choice of medium.

ive been on trials & vent interviews & both have gone really well, when ive had them. i have no problem with them & infact prefer them, rather than having to write a whole wall of writing when its so much easier to talk about what youve done. 7 years of writing about previous raid xp can get a bit much.

Despite me stressing to people to keep things brief they insist on writing essays, I even had an app recentley they listed all of their key bindings, why is this information considered pertinent.

Personally all I look at in an application is that their character is as geared and progressed as we want and I will look over their logs and I feel like this is nearly everything I need to make a decision. With regards to whether someone will fit in socially I don't really care, if their raid performance is of a high enough calibre they will have to go a long way not to fit in. Judging by other guilds application forms my view is in the minority and I would be interested to hear why.

Actualy keybidings are requested in most high level raiding guild (read semihardcore+) and even a screenshoot of your UI during combat like dungeon or raid fight. In my guild application these two are mandatory and will tell you why.
UI screenshoot give you general idea what actualy this person see on his screen during combat. This way you can see how much he is able to see during the fight and you will know if he can react fast and in a proper way.
Key bidings are also a good way to understand how fast can that person react to the situations. Very simple example - Hpala have his lay on hands bind on let say (picking randomly here) "F8"/"-"/"="/"U". This buttons are qute far away from your fingers if you play with WASD buttons and it best cases it might take him up to 2 seconds to use his GCD to save someone from certain death, will it be tank, another healer or dps and 2 seconds can be the diffrence if that one live or dies and the result of the fight - wipe or kill.

Edit - Dont count only on gear ilvl, expirience and logs. They are relevant, but its always good to look and the other things.And for this binding/UI thing you should make one of your officer/guildmate who plays the class/spec and you are sure they play it good to check them and to tell you if his bindings are good or not. Dont do everything alone! :P Thats why are the officers you know

Last edited by Deithy; 2013-11-20 at 02:49 PM.

Two things define you: your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.

ive been on trials & vent interviews & both have gone really well, when ive had them. i have no problem with them & infact prefer them, rather than having to write a whole wall of writing when its so much easier to talk about what youve done. 7 years of writing about previous raid xp can get a bit much.

Write them in some consolidated manner than, and think about it from the oposite direction - Is going through this exciting to read? If the answer is "no" you are not only wasting your time writing it, but you waste the readers time as well And in extreme complicated app the background checking of super sucesfull 6/6 SWP, 12/12H ICC raiders is not fun either.

Actualy keybidings are requested in most high level raiding guild (read semihardcore+) and even a screenshoot of your UI during combat like dungeon or raid fight. In my guild application these two are mandatory and will tell you why.
UI screenshoot give you general idea what actualy this person see on his screen during combat. This way you can see how much he is able to see during the fight and you will know if he can react fast and in a proper way.
Key bidings are also a good way to understand how fast can that person react to the situations. Very simple example - Hpala have his lay on hands bind on let say (picking randomly here) "F8"/"-"/"="/"U". This buttons are qute far away from your fingers if you play with WASD buttons and it best cases it might take him up to 2 seconds to use his GCD to save someone from certain death, will it be tank, another healer or dps and 2 seconds can be the diffrence if that one live or dies and the result of the fight - wipe or kill.

Edit - for this binding you should make one of your officer/guildmate who plays the class/spec to check them and to tell you if his bidings are good or not. Dont do everything alone! :P Thats why are the officers you know

In fairness I don't really care how easy or hard someone's bindings are all I care abut is that they can press them at the right time, I generally get this information from logs and as long as everthing looks peachy there I wil be able to get the absolute performance on a trial.

If your able to control the webpage just make the box so your only allowed to enter so many characters. Then change the question to in 250 (or whatever you decide) characters or less describe yourself. Or since the question has no meaning to you just simply don't ask it and ask only questions that do have meaning.

Whilst I see the OPs reason for keeping it short, I'd assume that the guilds focus is purely progress, which seems to be working seeing they're 12/14hc with 9 hours a week.

I think 'some' form of application needs to exist for any long standing serious guild (in the 25man format at least). My guilds application form isn't anything mind blowing, there are some standard questions, although maybe it's a bit longer or more in-depth than others. (you can find it at www.azuremystchampions.com)
Like the OP we're also 12/14hc, although we're raiding 12 hours a week.
The reason for us having a much more detailed application is because we have different aspirations for our guild, the people come first and the progress 2nd (to an extent), we aim to clear content when current (and succeed) and have little interest in doing it 'faster'. For that reason we like to hear more about the person rather than just the character, we want people to fit in socially so that WoW can be an enjoyable past time even outside of raids. Whilst certainly we could just invite anyone and see how it goes we consider that quite a waste of our time (considering how many apps we decline) and would also hinder our raiding and jeopardize the social aspect. We also try to be considerate to the person applying, it costs real money to transfer servers / faction, especially if alts are involved, we'd like to avoid that cost where possible and picking out details of an application is one of doing so.

We're also aware that people have different 'app writing' skills, sometimes it's quite hard to tell how good somebody is or what their personality is like from a written application, regardless I think it saves everybody time, effort and money in the long run.

Might also be worth mentioning that we don't recruit for the bench, we only recruit as needed to fill raids with as little rotation as possible, hence some extra questions about time commitment and raid prep. It's also very rare we fail trials, although not unheard of. In general our application form acts as a preliminary trial :P our careful selection of who to accept generally carries forwards into people that become long term raiders.

Not really sure why people want UI pics so badly, that's about as autistic as it gets.

Unless you're a healer using default frames or some guy who binds his rotation keys on f5 or 7-0 or are a clicker then that doesn't matter at all if the logs are great.

I use ElvUI for my UI and have everything neat and tidy and easily visible. However, when I heal, I use the Blizzard raid frames because they offer easily viewable feedback. Grid is too messy for me, and ElvUI's raid frames are terrible for keeping track of HoTs.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Fluttershy

Vuhdo is 20x better. A person of equivalent skill will perform far better with it compared to default.

Unless you can provide some detailed statistics to prove this, I'll sum this up as a subjective opinion. I haven't tried Vuhdo since Wrath, but back then it was terrible muddled.

Same shit that you would expect for a job application. Swap your job experience and relevant talents for WoW stuff...

They're (short for They are) describes a group of people. "They're/They are a nice bunch of guys." Their indicates that something belongs/is related to a group of people. "Their car was all out of fuel." There refers to a location. "Let's set up camp over there." There is also no such thing as "could/should OF". The correct way is: Could/should'VE, or could/should HAVE.Holyfury armory